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How time flies – it is almost half term and I realised that I had not set my new classes up on Manga High or Sumdogwhich I have now rectified. Looking at the games again on Manga High in particular I was struck by the excellent variety of Mathematics skills involved. So many so called Mathematics games are simply Arithmetic but on Manga High students can use games to practise Algebra and Geometry as well as Arithmetic Skills. The Basic Package (free) allows access to all the games and teachers can set the excellent Prodigi Quizzes for a week at a time; teachers will find clear Getting Started Guides here. Scroll down this pageto see some samples of the quizzes and for a very comprehensive guide to the content check the information hereselecting Algebra for example shows the extensive resources available.

With my Year 9 (UK age 13-14) class we have been studying simultaneous equations and for their homework as well as the text exercises I have given them some alternatives online to support their work, as a school we use MyMaths (subscription site), I have also linked to David Smith’s excellent site (free) and I have just added three Prodigi quizzes to the list! It will be interesting to see which they like – I feel a survey coming on!

Returning to the games, hover over any game to check the skills tested; for example try Algebra Meltdown or The Wrecks Factor for algebraic skills.

I have written on Sumdog before, that post has various useful links. You will see from the Sumdog blog that you can now choose skills appropriate for your school; having initially chosen the UK National Curriculum – I changed my mind and went back to the Classic set – skills for 5-14 year olds, worldwide.

Manga High seems well known for its games, it is also well worth investigating the excellent Prodigi quizzes available.

Hundreds of these are available offering excellent curriculum coverage. To access the resources select Challenges from the Activities menu.

The search facility offers teachers the opportunity to filter by curriculum area, age, level and whether a calculator is allowed; for example a simple search of Prodigi quizzes on Algebra gives the results as shown below. (A complete list of all quizzes is available here.)

Unlike the available games students cannot see the available Prodigi quizzes unless a teacher sets them as challenges (or you have a subscription). You can view very clear instructions on setting challenges on the Manga High website.

I have been meaning to try out Manga High, a games-based Mathematics site for a while now – particularly as it is now free to UK schools. Registration is a simple process as is signing up your students. There are many documents available for teachers – see Resources. I received a quick and supportive reply to a query I sent.

I set my very able Year 9s (age 13-14) some challenges on Quadratic Equations as we have been studying them recently and also asked them to explore the resources on the site. I asked for their views, including whether they thought this would help other students. There is no doubt that they were all highly engaged in what they were doing. I wish to explore the quizzes further as these do look promising.

So here are their first thoughts; I’ll update this as more comments come in.

Clara and Emily
We found this website very useful as it was fun yet educational, and we got very competitive playing the quizes which made us want to continue. We think that others will really enjoy this too, particularly year 7s, as it is a fun way to learn. We would like to keep using it!